Page 74 of Two to Tango

I shrug in response, but that answer probably isn’t doing me any favors. “Bien,” I reply half-heartedly. But, I realize, if there were one person to talk to in the middle of my own dilemmas, it would be her.

“How do you do it?” I ask her instead.

“Do it?”

“Do any of it. How did you create this perfect life? How did you break away from what everybody else wanted for you?”

“Mierda,” she says, lifting her eyebrows in surprise. She takes a minute to answer, giving whatever she’s about to say some thought. “You have to chip away at it slowly,” she answers. “You have to learn to love the cracks, see the beauty in them. We learn something new every day. You should embrace it. It’s so easy to fall into shame when it’s that primal feeling you felt as a child. When too much was put on your shoulders,” she touches my shoulder gently. “When too much was expected of you and all you learned was to be good.”

I swallow.

“Your mistakes don’t define you, Julieta. Neither does your perfection. You are good.” She points to my heart, driving her words home. “But still. It’s a process to learn to do things for yourself. And it’s a learning curve, a balance.”

A balance. My whole life has felt like balance, never trying to fall too far in one direction, never wanting to tip the scales. “And how do I start then?”

“Well,” she takes a breath. “You ask yourself what you want. That’s a broad question, so you start small. What do I want right now?” She looks around the table. “What do I want to eat?”

“What do I want to eat? That’s the life changing question?”

She laughs. “You come to this house every single Sunday, and you sit in that same chair, and you pick up that same plate, and your mother places serving upon serving of food on it, encouraging you to eat everything, and then sends you home with a ton of leftovers you may or may not want. What if you made your own plate without the imposition of others, what wouldyouwant to eat?”

I sit back, silent, unable to answer this one small question that, unlike my sassy remark, may very well be life-changing for me.

“And then you ask yourself, what do I want today? And what do I want this week? And what do I want in the next six months? And then, what do I want in this life? But answering the question is one thing. Acting on it is another. Setting the boundary, teaching yourself not to care about what others think—that’s the hard part.” She lifts an eyebrow, eyeballing me like she knows the difficulty of it.

“You chip away at it,” she repeats. “Little by little. You learn to slowly live life for yourself. And eventually, you build a life you love so much, that makes you so happy, that nothing else matters.”

She finishes the last sip of her wine, and I sit a bit dazed.

Cecilia gets up to go into the kitchen and tells everybody she’s got to go. “Me voy. Bye.” She kisses everybody goodnight, gives me a wink, and then she’s out the door.

There’s a rustle next to me and I turn to see T sitting down beside me, eating a slice of cake.

“Where did that come from?”

“There’s some in the kitchen. I dunno, I think she got it from Publix.” She shrugs, taking a bite. “It’s fine.”

I snort in response as I pull out my phone to check messages and emails, something out of habit. But I realize as I do it, I don’t care. I don’t want to know what Barbara needs. I don’t careabout what tomorrow morning will look like. I can figure it out then. I click the phone off and put it back in my pocket.

“This is good,” T nods, watching me closely. “I like it.”

“What?”

“Your new hobby,” she says around a mouthful of cake.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.” She smiles like she’s got a juicy secret, and I choose not to think too much of it. Instead, I lean on this newfound feeling of excitement and enjoyment. I lean on the relief of finally telling somebody else what’s been going on.

“Keep going, Julie.”

This feels like tumbling toward something in the best way, falling right into it and rolling downhill. That’s how everything felt last night, like something unstoppable. Like when I caught sight of him at the Alley Cat that one night and wondered what destruction I could be barreling into. Except I misread it.

It’s not destruction. It’s pleasure in all its forms.

And I want it all.

“I think I’m going to go,” I tell T.

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